Author 




Title 



Imprint. 



IS — 47372-2 SPO 



I 



Public Schools 



or 



Denominational Schools? 



PASTORAL LETTER 



ON 



"The Separation of the School from the Church" 

ISSUED IN 1873 BY » Q A 

Right Reverend \V. EfvoN, KETTELER, 

BISHOP OF MENTZ. 




from the german 
By a Catholic Priest. 



V^4f3 X 



I 



NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO: 

BENZ^IGER BROTHERS, 

Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 
1892. 



JW 






Copyright, 1892, 

BY 

BENZIGER BROTHERS. 









BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

OP 

WILLIAM EMANUEL von KETTELER. 

By The Translator. 

W. E. von Ketteler was born December 25, 1811, at Munster, 
Germany, and ordained priest in the same city June 1, 1844. The funeral 
oration which he delivered at the grave of those who had fallen victims 
of the revolution at Frankfort in September, 1848, and his address on 
" The Liberty of the Church and the Social Crisis/' held in Mentz at 
the first Catholic Congress, 1849, established his fame all over Germany. 
Only six years after his ordination he was raised by Pius IX. to the epis- 
copal see of Mentz and consecrated bishop July 25, 1850. 

For more than a quarter of a century Bishop Ketteler was an orna- 
ment of the Catholic hierarchy, and the foremost champion of the rights 
and liberties of Catholics in Germany. Indefatigable in the discharge 
of the special duties towards his diocese, he was ever ready as orator or 
publicist to defend the true interests of the Church and of society at 
large. He issued 50 pastoral letters and 7 larger memorials addressed 
to his diocese ; he published, moreover, 30 books or pamphlets such as 
" Liberty, Authority, and Church " (1862) ; "The Social Question and 
Christianity" (1864); "The True Basis of Religious Peace" (1868); 
" The General Council and its Significance for our Time" (1869); " The 
Infallible Teaching Authority of the Pope " (1871); " Liberalism, Social- 
ism, and Christianity " (1871); " The Breach of Religious Peace and the 
only Way of Restoring it" (1875). Several of these works reached four, 
five, six, that at the head of the list even eleven, editions, and were trans- 
lated into various languages. 

The social question and the school question formed Ketteler's favorite 
subjects which he studied continually and treated of in many of his 
writings and sermons or addresses. In regard to the social question 
Leo XIII. once declared Ketteler his " great predecessor," and Cardinal 
Manning said, " In the social movement Ketteler made room for the 
cross." His last publication contained four sermons " On the Duties of 

3 



4 Biographical Sketch of William Emanuel von Ketteler. 

Parents and the Home under the Modern Conditions of School Educa- 
tion " (1877). In 1876 he had written ou " The Dangers of the New 
School Legislation for the Religious and Moral Education of Children 
in the Common Schools.'* All the writings of Bishop Ketteler show his 
great and clear mind, his deep religious convictions, his sincere love for 
mankind, particularly the laborers and the young. 

Bishop Ketteler was most firmly attached to the apostolic chair of 
Peter, and was a great friend and admirer of Pope Pius IX. As member 
of the Vatican Council (1869) he belonged to the so-called minority, 
deeming the solemn declaration of the infallibility of the Pope " inoppor- 
tune," though he always adhered unwaveringly to the doctrine itself. In 
1877 he went for the fifth time to the Eternal City on the occasion of the 
episcopal jubilee of Pius IX. On his way home, however, he fell danger- 
ously ill in a Capuchin monastery in Bavaria, and died there July 13, 
1877. His remains rest in the cathedral of Mentz. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. What are Denominational Schools? . .... 8 

II. What are Secular Public Schools ? 9 

III. What did our Forefathers think of the Separation of the School from the 

Church? 12 

IV. What do Religion, Reason, and Man's Nature, what the Interests of the 

Family and Experience, tell us concerning the Separation of the School 
from the Church ? 13 

V. What must we, therefore, judge of the Suppression of the Denominational 

School and the Establishment of the Secular Public School? . . .23 

VI. Who Demands, after all, the Separation of the School from the Church ? 

Who alone can Demand it ? ....... .27 

VII. Duty of Christian Parents concerning the School Question . . .29 

5 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

OR 

DENOMINATIONAL SCHOOLS? 



WILLIAM EMANUEL, 

by the mercy of God and favor of the Holy Apostolic See, Bishop of 
Mentz, Domestic Prelate and Throne- Assistant to his Holiness the 
Pope, to all the priests and faithful of our diocese health and bene- 
diction in the Lord! 

rPHE school question is undoubtedly one of the most important ques- 
- 1 - tions of our times. It affects deeply and lastingly every home, 
every family. For it relates not to the temporal property which the 
family have inherited, or acquired by the sweat of their brow ; it touches 
that which is nearest and dearest to parents, their children. The ques- 
tion at issue is whether the children should be conscientiously instructed 
and thoroughly educated according to the spirit of Christianity, as they 
hitherto have been, or misinstructed and perverted according to the 
party spirit of the age, and thus be ruined for time and eternity. 

For this reason it is a sacred duty incumbent on all parents to direct 
their whole attention more than ever to the management of the schools 
to which the existing laws force them to entrust their children. The 
schools are intended for your children; you must support them at the 
cost of great sacrifices. You can, therefore, demand such an arrange- 
ment of the schools as is best suited to the education of your children. 

Here, then, arises, first of all, the question: which of the two 
school systems is the better one for your children — the denominational 
school which is intimately connected with the Church, or the public 
school which is separated from the Church ? You must make your- 
selves thoroughly acquainted with the advantages and disadvantages of 
these two systems. All parents must arrive at a clear judgment on this 
question: which is the better for the salvation of my child — the de- 
nominational school or the secular public school ? This may soon become 
a practical case, as this subject may be submitted to the decision of the 
community. Who among you would be so indifferent as not to examine 



8 Public Schools or Deno7?iinational Schools f 

this vital question carefully ? Who would not uphold with all lawful 
means that school which he reasonably deems the best ? Any one who 
leaves the decision in so important a matter to others is most assuredly 
a father, a mother, devoid of all conscience, unconcerned about that on 
which the future happiness of their offspring most essentially depends. 

I shall, therefore, answer a number of questions concerning school 
education in order to induce you, dear parents, to consider and weigh 
them seriously and conscientiously. Allow me to ask: 

I. WHAT ARE DENOMINATIONAL SCHOOLS? 

Denominational schools, first, are such schools into which, as a rule, 
only children of one and the same religious denomination are admitted ; 
secondly, in which only such teachers are appointed as profess the re- 
ligion of the children; and thirdly, in which religion forms the basis of 
the whole education and instruction. In the denominational schools, 
accordingly, the pastor of the congregation has the necessary authority 
to watch over the religious education of the children. 

According to the existing laws, the school as just described was, up 
to the present date, the school of our country. The edict of June 6th, 
1832, which regulates the primary schools, ordains expressly that the 
teacher must ordinarily belong to the Christian denomination of his 
pupils; that, besides the other conditions required for his appointment, 
he must faithfully comply with his Christian duties, and that religion 
shall be the basis of all common schools. The teacher, moreover, shall, 
as the edict very beautifully says, share with the family " to which the 
child belongs" the duty of educating it; he shall "form it into a pious 
and solid man;" he shall endeavor to accomplish this purpose "by 
instruction, example, and charity, by an amicable intercourse with the 
parents," and, as far as necessary, "supply what is wanting in the home 
education." To the same end he shall also attend the divine service with 
the children, and watch over them while at church. True, the supreme 
direction of all the schools is entrusted to the state alone, to the exclu- 
sion of the Church. But this principle, which we cannot admit as just, 
is essentially modified by the fact that an important share in the direc- 
tion of schools is conceded to religion on all the official school boards. 

Such has been till now the condition of our schools, allowing religion 
still to exercise on them the most necessary influence. On the basis of 
such laws our schools have hitherto enjoyed a satisfactory development. 
As to their results, our schools are no doubt on a level with the best of 
other countries, and have, as far as it depended on them, solved to a 
great extent the task of forming " pious and solid men." On that 
account you had also confidence in our schools. You could commit 



Public Schools or Denominational Schools ? 9 

your children to them with the consoling assurance that piety, virtue, 
and all the good you had instilled into their hearts in your families, 
would not be destroyed, but rather be fostered and promoted under the 
hand of a pious teacher. If parents, therefore, hitherto were not so 
actively interested in matters of school education as it was properly their 
duty and as they formerly always had been, the reason for it lay chiefly 
in the confidence they could place in the school authorities and teachers. 

II. WHAT ARE SECULAK PUBLIC SCHOOLS? 

I wish to remark at this stage that I do not speak here of the 
common schools as they exceptionally still exist even after our edict. 
Since the primary schools, as a rule, are denominational; since, moreover, 
the spirit of the edict is based on denominational schools, and religion is 
everywhere represented in the directing authorities; since, finally, the 
teachers themselves are trained in denominational seminaries, a pure 
system of secular public schools could not as yet develop itself in our 
country. Thus, the appointment of Jewish teachers would scarcely 
have been possible. I speak, therefore, of the secular public schools as 
they should be introduced according to the intention of the party which 
now demands everywhere the complete separation of Church and school. 

Such public schools, then, are schools which receive children and en- 
gage teachers irrespective of any religious denomination. All children 
of a community or town, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and such children 
as have been brought up in complete infidelity, are instructed together 
in the same school, and distributed in the various classes exclusively ac- 
cording to the grade of their knowledge. Side by side with a Christian 
teacher a Jewish teacher, or one without any religion, is with the same 
right appointed to instruct Christian children. 

A natural consequence of this arrangement is that the position of 
religion in such a public school is just the opposite of that which it has 
in a denominational school. In the latter religion, and not only its 
doctrine but also its practice, is the basis of the whole instruction and 
education. In the secular school, on the contrary, the religious instruc- 
tion and life of the child can at best be considered as a matter which is 
cared for outside the school, and which is incumbent exclusively on the 
parents and pastors. The school itself has nothing to do with it; it is 
not connected with any denomination, and, since without any denomina- 
tion religion itself cannot be conceived, it is truly irreligious, or godless. 

In a secular public school Catholic children dare not even bless 
themselves, because non-Catholic children would be shocked, and their 
teacher may be a Jew or an infidel, as well as a Christian. For the 
same reason no prayer whatever may be pronounced as is customary in 



io Public ScJiools or Denominational Schools ? 

the church and in the family. One may not speak of the Church, of the 
holy sacraments, of the ecclesiastical year, and the difference of the holy 
seasons. The holy season of Christmas with all its impressions and 
blissful joys for the hearts of the children, the holy season of Lent, the 
holy season of Easter with its thousandfold Alleluia, the holy season of 
Pentecost and Corpus Christi, — all this passes for the secular public 
school without meaning, and can never be mentioned there. The walls 
of such a school are empty and bare, showing no crucifix, no sacred 
image or picture; likewise the whole year passes monotonous and joyless 
for Christian children. 

The pastor of the child, he who is most apt to work upon its soul, has 
no longer any power in the school. Neither do parents exercise any in- 
fluence there, since the pastor represents, at the same time, the interests 
of the parents. All that religion has imparted to the children through 
the medium of pious parents, brothers, and sisters, all those happiest and 
most ennobling sentiments and pleasures, are entirely banished from the 
children during all the hours of the many years which they must spend 
at the public school. As often as the school-room opens the child finds 
itself in a sphere totally different from that in which it lives at home. 
What in the eyes of virtuous and good parents is the principal thing it 
sees and hears treated at school as if it were the most insignificant and 
worthless matter in the world, since the teacher does not so much as even 
mention it. 

In this point, dear parents, you must not give yourselves up to the 
delusion that the fatal consequences of the public schools can in reality 
be avoided through the influence of a pious and good teacher. For, all 
I have just said cannot be averted or prevented even by the best teacher, 
painful as this may be to his heart. He can neither in general nor on 
special occasions give vent to his personal pious sentiments, because by 
so doing he would give the children of other denominations a cause 
for complaint. Even the most pious teacher is, therefore, compelled to 
banish religion as far as possible from the school and all subjects of in- 
struction, and to treat the children as if in fact religion, Christ, and the 
Church did not exist at all. 

True, some maintain that this is not exactly the case, and that the 
secular public school, though it is not denominational, is not an irrelig- 
ious school. They speak, therefore, of a universal religious instruction 
which is not denominational, and of a universal school morality which is 
sufficient to form the child into a good and moral man. But all these 
are great illusions. 

Imagine, for example, a school in which children of Catholics, Protest- 
ants, and Jews are gathered. What kind of religion could a teacher treat 
of there ? He dare not speak of all the doctrines in which Catholics differ 



Public Schools or Denominational Schools ? 1 1 

from Protestants; the Protestant children and parents would not suffer 
it. Moreover, he dare not speak of the teachings concerning Jesus 
Christ and the Kedemption; the Jewish children would not tolerate it. 
Consequently, there would remain only a general teaching about God 
which he could explain. But since men go so far in their folly, accord- 
ing to Holy Scripture, as to deny even God, or, at least, distort and cor- 
rupt the teaching on God to such an extent that in the minds of many 
nothing is left but gods and idols which they have made for themselves, 
it might finally come to such a pass that a teacher could not even speak of 
God, lest he should wound the ears of those children who are the off- 
spring of infidel parents. Such is the universal religion of the secular 
public school. 

The same may be said as to the universal school morality. The 
entire history of heathendom preceding the advent of Jesus Christ 
demonstrates in the most fearful manner what value the so-called univer- 
sal religion and morality has for the formation of men. Undoubtedly in 
man's nature, even without revelation, there lies the capacity of know- 
ing God and the principal duties towards Him. But because men no 
longer wished to read the divine handwriting in their souls God wrote 
His commandments on the solid stone of the tables of the law, and when 
even this writing on stone was not sufficient, He gave us, finally, through 
His only-begotten Son a celestial, supernatural light and power to enable 
us to escape the corruption of heathendom. As the universal religion 
and morality in heathendom could not save mankind from the lowest 
degradation and the most hideous depravation, so it can now save neither 
us nor our children. 

The other pleas for secular schools are of the same kind : that the 
cultivation of the understanding makes the child moral; that faith is 
incompatible with knowledge, and that the school, therefore, should 
occupy itself only with science and the Church with faith; finally, that 
dogma should be learned only after one has left the school. 

Heathendom has been showing for 4000 years what our natural 
reason without faith can accomplish towards morality, and daily experi- 
ence shows the same by the great number of those who, notwithstanding 
all their culture, have fallen a prey to the deepest immorality. That 
knowledge and faith are incompatible is a doctrine which has been con- 
demned as an error by the Church, and which can only be asserted by 
such as have, through their infidelity, lost all idea of the true faith. The 
same holds good with the third assertion, that man should learn the 
teachings of faith only in his after-life. This, too, can only be main- 
tained by people who have in reality lost the belief in a divine revelation. 
Whosoever believes that God has, through His divine Son, revealed Him- 



1 2 Public Schools or Denominational Schools 9 

self to us, must be convinced that these divine teachings cannot be 
imparted to the child too early. 

To the secular schools, therefore, we may apply what the Redeemer 
said of those builders who build on sand. With their universal religion, 
Avith their universal school-morality, with their exclusive cultivation of 
the understanding, etc., they are institutions in which the whole future 
of the children is being built on sand; and when the young have scarcely 
been dismissed from school, and withdrawn from the guardianship of 
their parents, then the first blast will suffice to overthrow the whole 
moral structure, and to deliver them, lacking all moral strength, to the 
many seductions and passions of youth. 

Such is the secular public school — in the full sense of the word, an 
irreligious, godless school. 

III. WHAT DID OUR FOREFATHERS THINK OF THE SEPARATION OF THE 
SCHOOL FROM THE CHURCH ? 

In former ages secular public schools were not known. Even among 
the heathens it was never doubted that education and instruction must 
be religious. With the Jews this was likewise an established truth. 
During all the Christian centuries, moreover, the conviction was incon- 
testable that religion and school must be intimately connected. Our 
Christian forefathers without exception would have considered the sepa- 
ration of school and Church as irrational, impious, and pernicious. With 
all Christian nations the school is in the best and fullest sense a daughter 
of the Church. All schools, the higher, middle, and lower, sprang origi- 
nally from the Church. When the Church founded her new colonies in 
the midst of uncivilized, savage races, when barbarity was reigning up to 
the very walls of the cloister, she established everywhere within these 
came walls nurseries of science and schools for the training of youth. 

The reformation of the sixteenth century did not change this inti- 
mate union of religion and school. In the treaty of Westphalia both 
Catholics and Protestants unanimously expressed the old Christian view 
as to the proper position of the school; they declared that the school 
was an " annexum exercitii religionis," a necessary appendage for the 
free practice of religion, and, consequently, inseparably connected with 
religion. According to this Christian and absolutely correct conception, 
therefore, the free exercise of religion is curtailed and impeded wherever 
the school is withdrawn from the Church. Also, later on, when the state 
began to take charge of the schools, the principle, nevertheless, was 
firmly adhered to, that the influence of religion should not be impaired, 
and that religion should remain the basis of the school. The above- 
mentioned regulation of the school edict of 1832 shows that only a few 



Public Schools or Denominational Schools ? 1 3 

years ago the opinion was still universally held in our country that de- 
nominational schools, not secular public schools, correspond to the true 
interests of our people. 

Hence you see, beloved parents, that up to the present day secular 
public schools were never and nowhere wanted. Let this be a warning 
for you not to abandon this sacred tradition without the most serious 
examination, and to be on your guard in such an important question 
which is most closely bound up with the welfare of your children. Do 
not accede thoughtlessly to the opinions of the day. We must, therefore, 
put to ourselves another question : 



IV. WHAT DO RELIGION, REASON, AND MAN'S NATURE, WHAT THE IN- 
TERESTS OF THE FAMILY AND EXPERIENCE TELL US CONCERN- 
ING THE SEPARATION OF THE SCHOOL FROM THE CHURCH ? 

They tell us unanimously that the secular public school destroys 
Christian education; that it is in contradiction with all principles of 
religion and reason, with the nature of the child, with the interests of 
the family; and that, finally, wherever it has been introduced it has 
been attended with the most pernicious consequences. 

1. The secular public school is in contradiction with all principles of 
religion. 

As Christians we must judge all important questions chiefly accord- 
ing to the principles of religion, and not according to the changing 
opinions of the day. Eeligion contains God's revelation and the teaching 
of Jesus Christ. Eeligion alone, therefore, can with full certainty 
answer the great questions which present themselves to us; it alone can 
show, in particular, the ways that lead to the true welfare of our children. 

But religion teaches us that man is placed on earth to know, to love, 
and to serve God, and thereby to become happy here and hereafter. 
With this destiny all other conditions of man must agree, as the road we 
are to take depends on the goal we want to reach. The school, therefore, 
which has such an important influence on the course of the child's whole 
after-life, must likewise lead it to the knowledge, love, and service of 
God, and thus assist it towards its true temporal and eternal welfare. 
From this conviction sprang the old Christian principle that religion 
must form the basis of all human concerns, and, in particular, of the 
school. The secular public school, however, denies this truth, because it 
knows nothing of the true destiny of man, and aims at nothing higher 
for the child beyond this life. It is, accordingly, essentially based on 
infidelity. 

Religion teaches us, moreover, that mankind has fallen deep through 



1 4 Public Schools or Denominational Schools f 

sin; that our mind has been obscured and our will weakened; that we 
need, therefore, a Redeemer; that Christ alone points out the true way 
which leads to our happiness; that He alone by His grace frees our 
understanding from innumerable errors, and renders our will again 
strong and powerful. All these truths pervade the whole treatment of 
the child in the denominational school; but they are all completely 
ignored by the secular public school, and in this respect also the public 
school is based on infidelity. 

2. The secular public school, in consequence, destroys also all Chris- 
tian education. 

In the school, instruction and education are most intimately and 
indissolubly connected. Every instruction is, at the same time, educa- 
tion. This lies in the nature of the child who is fast developing all its 
faculties and powers of both body and soul. Whatever it sees and hears 
affects its education. At school it learns not only to read, to write, and 
to figure, but also to live a good or a bad life ; it imprints in its mind the 
principles according to which it will arrange its after-life; it contracts 
good and bad habits which soon become a second nature. What a 
destructive influence must, therefore, the secular public school exercise 
on the whole education of the child ! 

The Christian education, furthermore, derives its educational means, 
first and above all, from Christ Himself, from the Christian faith and 
Christian duties, from the graces and sacraments of Christ. These living 
fountains for the education and formation of the child are totally 
obstructed in the public school. What God complained of in the old 
covenant, that His people have " forsaken the fountain of living water 
and have digged to themselves cisterns," * holds pre-eminently good with 
the secular public schools. All the fountains of divine assistance which 
Christ offers us to make our children pious, good, and happy have in 
them run dry. There you find only cisterns, i.e., means of instruction 
which men have invented. 

What, however, will the public school system substitute for the great 
and wonderful educational means of Christianity ? It has nothing but 
its miserable, sickly school-morality of which we spoke above, and which 
without the aid of Christianity is absolutely unable to make men truly 
good . 

Besides, the secular public school destroys Christian education also 
directly, because all subjects of instruction must be treated without that 
immediate reference to God, to Christ, to religion, which is an essential 
feature of the denominational school. All things have been created by 
God and for God, are continually preserved, governed, and directed 

* Jereni. ii., 13. 



Public Schools or Denominational Schools f 15 

by God, and are, therefore, most intimately connected with God. In the 
same manner, a good instruction must in all the various subjects con- 
stantly direct the attention of the pupils to this connection of the world 
with God. A pious teacher, accordingly, brings everything into connection 
with God, and thereby accustoms the child to refer all things to God, to 
find, and love, and serve God in all things. Oh, how beautiful and 
beneficial is such an instruction ! How it forms the mind and character 
of the child, and rewards the teacher with the happiest results ! How 
all these little germs of truth and virtue grow strong and vigorous, which 
God has planted in the hearts of the young to be fostered and developed 
by pious parents, teachers, and priests ! A child's soul in which all 
these divine germs are daily cherished by education and instruction is 
indeed a heavenly flower-garden, and the gardeners who, full of love, 
walk about tending the flowers, are good parents, good teachers, good 
priests. 

All this, however, is entirely neglected by the secular public school; 
nay, more : the contrary effect is produced by it. Whereas the denomina- 
tional school uses everything to lift up the soul of the child to God, to 
direct its eye and heart heavenwards, the public school treats all subjects 
of instruction as if there were no God, no Christ, and it accustoms, there- 
fore, the child to view all earthly things in such a manner as if there 
were no God and no Christ. But thus the public school is by its very 
nature, even against the will of the teacher, a veritable school and insti- 
tute of godlessness; for, as the essence of religion consists in the union 
of man with God and, accordingly, the essence of a religious education 
in the training to this union, so the essence of an irreligious, godless 
education consists in the child's being accustomed to look upon itself 
and the world without reference to God. But if the child for the many 
years of school attendance has been accustomed to hear so many things 
spoken of without their connection with God, it must finally come to 
look at nature in a similar way as the brute animal does, which knows 
" by the things that are made" * neither the existence nor the attributes 
of its Creator. 

Now, if the secular school is, by its very nature, destructive of 
Christian education, this will be much more the case if the teacher 
himself is not a Christian, or is even hostile to all religion. The public 
school does not care about the faith of the teacher; it cares only about 
his knowledge, his examination. A necessary consequence of this 
system is, besides, the irreligious seminary for teachers. Who could, there- 
fore, for any great length of time keep away from such schools teachers 
who are imbued with those materialistic opinions concerning God and 

* Rom. li., 20. 



1 6 Public Schools or Denominational Schools? 

nature which are so wide-spread nowadays; teachers who, perhaps, in 
your children hardly recognize an immortal soul or anything more than 
a lump of earth shaped in this way or that way; teachers who are 
ignorant of all those heavenly doctrines of Christianity which make us 
revere and love in the soul of every child an image, a temple, a child of 
God, and an heir of heaven ? 

When you think of these public schools you must be careful not to 
represent to yourselves such a teacher as you had when you were young, 
— a pious Christian, a father during your childhood, who in union with 
your parents and pastors introduced you into a truly Christian life. The 
public school system Avould deprive us of these pious teachers, and in 
their stead we should often receive teachers who, having themselves 
fallen a prey to modern infidelity, would with cold hearts and darkened 
minds be strangers and enemies to the pious faith and love of religion 
which your children would bring along from their homes. Now con- 
sider, beloved parents, what an immense influence a teacher who for 
eight long years spends so many hours daily with your children in their 
most tender and susceptible age exercises on their whole development; 
and then reflect what consequences the influence of a man as I have 
described him must have on the whole Christian education of your off- 
spring. The children will soon instinctively feel that all which they 
were, at home and at church, taught to consider and to love as the highest 
and holiest is to their teacher an object of complete indifference and, per- 
haps, even of mockery and scorn. How great, then, is the danger that 
the children will follow the sentiments of the teacher rather than those 
of their parents ! 

Another very important circumstance is to be considered. Teachers 
who have no longer before their eyes the educational principles of Chris- 
tianity, and are no longer guided by them, must necessarily form for 
themselves other principles according to which they treat and educate 
the children at school. Now. there is scarcely another field where in 
the last hundred years so diverging and contradictory views have been 
advanced as in the field of education. Great and renowned schoolmen 
have applied principles which, if I proposed them to you, would make 
you shudder. True, afterwards they were found out to be erroneous, 
and were abandoned. But we shall learn on the day of judgment what 
incalculable harm the poor children suffered on whom these experiments 
of modern educators were practised. The very same thing would hap- 
pen in our primary schools. Young teachers would apply now such 
principles, now others, now this method of education, now that, and your 
poor children would be the subjects to be experimented upon. 

Till now, beloved parents, you knew with perfect clearness and cer- 
tainty according to what principles your children were treated and edu- 



Public Schools or Denominational Schools f i 7 

cated at school. They were the principles of your faith according to 
which you yourselves treat your children at home; the principles accord- 
ing to which you yourselves were once educated by pious parents, priests, 
and teachers; principles the value of which you yourselves have tested 
and experienced in your lives. All this ceases in the secular public 
school. If you were, however, to call the teacher to account for his per- 
verse educational opinions, he would answer you that you understand 
nothing about the matter, and that he has the right to educate your chil- 
dren according to his own views. 

Accordingly, a Christian education is out of the question in the pub- 
lic school system. If you, therefore, decide in favor of this system, you 
burden your soul with a fearful responsibility by depriving your children 
and all your descendants of all the blessings of a Christian education. 

3. The secular public school, in the third place, is in contradiction 
with reason itself and with the nature of the child. 

Viewing the matter merely in the light of reason, we cannot conceive 
anything more unreasonable and unnatural than the endeavor to exclude 
from the cultivation of the mind and heart of the child Almighty God, 
from whom all things proceed, in whom we live and move, from whom 
we continually have our being. The children are far more dependent 
upon God than even upon you, beloved parents. Now, a school which 
would try to separate the children from their parents under the pretext 
of culture would undoubtedly be a pernicious and unnatural institution. 
How much more is the public school, which loses sight of the relation of 
the child to God, a pernicious and unnatural institution! 

But considered from the Christian stand-point in particular, a school 
which ignores all that the Son of God Himself offers us in the Church for 
the education of man is irrational and unnatural in the highest degree. 
How can any one who is sincerely convinced of the divine origin of the 
Christian religion reasonably exclude from the school Christ, the divine 
Master and educator of mankind ? This would be an inconceivable cli- 
max of folly and absurdity. We can, therefore, but maintain that the 
public school system disclaims Christianity as the divine institution for 
the salvation of men, and that only such can support this kind of schools 
as have already lost the Christian faith. The public school, therefore, is 
essentially a part of the great apostasy from Christianity. Its true sig- 
nificance lies in this, that it is intended by the advocates of infidelity to 
be a school against Christianity, a means to stunt and, if possible, to 
crush the very first germs of the Christian faith in the hearts of the 
children. Parents, on the contrary, who still believe in the Redeemer of 
the world must necessarily, if they wish to act according to reason, de- 
mand that the whole school education of their offspring be pervaded and 
guided by the spirit of Christ. 



1 8 Public Schools or Denominational Schools ? 

Still in another respect we see how irrational and unnatural the secular 
public school is. Many console themselves with the thought that religious 
instruction need not be entirely excluded from the public school, since 
for it as for other subjects of instruction special lessons may be arranged. 
Religion is only forbidden to exercise its influence in the school itself, 
but the Church is not prevented from instructing the children thoroughly 
in the Christian doctrine during those appointed hours. Apart, however, 
from all I have already said above concerning this point, those who deem 
such an arrangement sufficient to impart a Christian formation to the 
children entirely misconceive the nature of the child. The soul of the 
child has, indeed, divers faculties, but all these faculties are not separated 
from one another : they form together the one, indivisible, spiritual 
nature of the child. We cannot, therefore, disconnect, as it were, its 
faculties, and separately hand them over for their education, one to the 
parents, another to the teacher, another to the priest, and afterwards 
again gather and join them into one man. We cannot educate one por- 
tion of the child to be pious and God-fearing, and bring up the other, in 
complete separation from God, for the world and all the wants of this 
earthly life, and finally form a true and solid Christian. These are 
mechanical ideas; in this way we deal with machines which we can take 
asunder and construct at will ; but this will not do with a living human 
being. Such notions are absolutely contrary to reason and nature. 
Children at school who spend the greatest part of their youth without 
any regard to their faith cannot in some few hours of religious instruc- 
tion be trained to a lively faith and a truly Christian life. In such a 
school, where all relations to God are cut off, their mind gradually be- 
comes insensible to whatsoever partakes of the supernatural, their will 
turns more and more away from God, and clings exclusively to earthly 
things, since they hear of nothing else at school. How can, then, the 
short religious instruction raise to God and to Christ those minds and 
hearts entirely bent on this earth ? Hut on such an irrational and un- 
natural supposition is the public school system based. 

4. The secular public school, furthermore, injures likewise the interests 
of the Christian family. It is not only, as the German bishops said in 
their last memorial issued at the tomb of St. Boniface, an anti-church, it 
is also an anti-family, system. 

There are, in fact, but two institutions founded by God for the spirit- 
ual and moral formation of man. These two institutions are the family 
and the Church. Both have their mission immediately and directly 
from God. The .child belongs, in the first place, to its parents. Be- 
sides, it belongs through baptism to the Church. The school is equally 
attached to both of these institutions; it is an aid of the parents and of 
the Church. The teacher has. to repeat once more the significant words 



Public Schools or Denominational Schools ? 19 

of our edict, " the important calling to share with the parents the duty of 
education, to make of the children pious and solid men." Now, if this 
formation and education of the child shall be successful, all depends on 
this, that the family, the Church, and the school are intimately united, 
and in the instruction and education supplement one another by always 
working on the same principles. The teachings which the child receives 
from the priest, the parents, and the teacher, about the great fundamental 
principles that are to be deeply imprinted in its mind and heart for the 
guidance of its whole life ; the teachings it receives about the principles 
of what is right, true, and good, about its end here on earth, about the 
duties it has to fulfil to become good and truly happy, — these teachings 
must evidently always be substantially the same, though they may differ 
as to the manner. It is only by such an internal unity that those three 
institutions really aid one another; at the same time, the child's respect 
for its parents, teachers, and oriests increases, and their influence on it 
becomes more efficacious. 

Now, religion alone is the sacred bond which unites the home, the 
school, and the Church. Only by a common faith is it possible that all 
those who share the calling of educating the child start from one truly 
uniform plan and are guided by the self-same principles. AVhere this 
unity of faith is wanting there the greatest confusion prevails among 
those who work at the development of one and the same child. If the 
child hears one teaching at school, another in the church, another again 
at home, there arises necessarily in its soul, not unity of formation, but 
complete confusion. Such a child is in the position of a man who, being 
ignorant of the right road, receives on his inquiry three different answers 
from three different persons. Thus the guides of youth become their 
seducers, and the school becomes but too often an enemy of the family, 
by destroying in the soul of the child what pious parents are daily build- 
ing up. 

5. Experience, finally, confirms what has hitherto been said of the 
secular public school. 

Wherever this system was introduced, or is still in vogue, the religious 
life of the children, families, and congregations, and the authority of the 
teachers were greatly damaged, the discipline and morals of youth were 
sapped, and even their accomplishments in the ordinary branches of 
instruction were superficial and defective. 

Our own city of Mentz, during the period of its occupation by the 
French, furnishes us with an obvious illustration of the results of secular 
school education. The parochial schools were not expressly abolished, 
but in reality they were separated from the Church. By the decree of 
Commissary Rudler of the year 1798 the catechism and other manuals 
of religious instruction had to be removed from the schools, and in their 



20 Public Schools or Denominational Schools ? 

stead " the fundamental rules of civic and republican morality " had to 
be taught. This " civic and republican morality " of the French revolu- 
tion coincides pretty much with what is now called " the universal school- 
morality." When the zealous Bishop Colmar came to this city the work 
of dechristianizing the schools of Mentz was, in spite of his opposition, 
promoted with might and main by the prefect of that time, a man ex- 
ceedingly hostile to the Catholic religion. The consequences of this 
separation of " the civic and republican morality " from faith and religion 
became manifest but too soon. Scarcely had some years elapsed, when 
the schools of Mentz, which had flourished under the electors, were 
decayed to the utmost degree. The voices which were then raised from 
all parties can hardly find words to describe the hopeless condition and 
total ruin of the schools of Mentz during the French period. But the 
source, too, of this decay was recognized and found to be the separation 
of the schools from the Church. The French Minister Portalis, there- 
fore, began at length to negotiate with Bishop Colmar to put a stop to 
the corruption, and requested him repeatedly to direct his priests to 
devote themselves again with all energy and love to the schools.* 

Similar were the results in Holland. In the year 1848 the new con- 
stitution ordered public instruction to be arranged in such a manner 
" that no one's religious sentiments and ideas should be offended. For 
the rest, the imparting of instruction is given free, save the inspection by 
the authority and a state examination of the teacher." This law, how- 
ever, based as it was on freedom and tolerance, was not suffered by 
modern liberalism to last long. By the new school law of August 13th. 
1857, the secular public school, or, as it is there termed, the neutral 
school — viz., neutral with regard to religious denominations — was intro- 
duced. 

But there, also, voices are since being heard from all sides giving 
information of the deplorable consequences of the new arrangement. A 
certain preacher, Schwarz by name, a Lutheran missionary and the editor 
of the " Heraut," has written au instructive little book on those conse- 
quences in the Protestant districts of Holland. Among other things he 
says: " The final results are distressing enough; more and more people, 
of both sexes, remain unconfirmed, often only baptized ; more and more 
marriages without religious blessing; ever increasing ignorance in relig- 
ious matters, which makes many a fervent believer an easy prey of fanat- 
ics, whilst it leads the light-minded and indifferent without resistance 
into the arms of the basest rationalism ; ever increasing morbid dismem- 
berment of the [Protestant] Church in various sects." The author goes 

* See " Die kath. Pfarrschulen in tier Stadt Mainz " [The Catholic Schools in the 
City of Mentz], by Christopher Monfang. 1863. Pa#es 4 ss. 



Public Schools or Denominational Schools ? 21 

on assuring us that, while he was engaged for six years in the direction 
of a Dutch mission society, he had many occasions to hold examinations, 
and that he found the saddest ignorance in a very large number of young 
people. On the moral effects of the neutral schools he remarks : " The 
condition of public morals, according to the unanimous testimony of ex- 
perienced observers and official statistics, has not become better since the 
introduction of the school law, as many expected it would. True, the 
great cities have their proportionate share in the moral depravation 
which seems to be inseparable from the gigantically increasing develop- 
ment of international communication; this is a product of different fac- 
tors easily accounted for. However, the continually growing immorality 
among the country population forms such a glaring contrast with the 
simplicity and severe manners of former days as to justify us perfectly in 
inferring therefrom the moral insufficiency of the irreligious schools." * 

Catholics in Holland express themselves in the same way. The writer 
of a series of instructive articles on this subject which were published in 
Munich says : " In fact, the number of illegitimate births is continually 
increasing; divorces are increasing; suicides are increasing; cases of in- 
sanity become more and more numerous, the victims of drunkenness 
more and more frequent." f 

A very noteworthy phenomenon in Holland — which, however, must 
occur in all countries where the public school system is adopted — is the 
variety of views among the schoolmen concerning the position which 
the neutral school should maintain towards the teaching of the Church. 
One says the neutral school, in opposition to the Church, must patronize 
freedom of inquiry; another, the school must lead to liberalism in re- 
ligion without adhering to any denomination whatever; another, the 
mere utterance of the teacher's own conviction made in the simplicity of 
his heart and with delicacy, without either touching upon the error of 
others or teaching his own opinion as a positive truth, cannot morally be 
considered as a transgression of the law ; another again, in order to teach 
Bible history without offence the doctrines of the Bible and the super- 
natural stories must be thrown overboard; another, finally, the fear of 
clashing with the teachings of faith need not hinder any one from point- 
ing to the supreme truth which manifests itself in the eternal laws of 
nature both in the material and moral order.J From all this we see 
clearly that a really neutral or non-denominational school is, in fact, a 
chimera, and that it always, by its very nature, develops into a school 



* "Die religionslose Schule cler Niederlande und ihre Fruechte " [The Irreligious 
School System of the Netherlands and its Fruits], pages 34 and 57. 
f Historisch-polit. Blaetter, 1871, vol. 68, p. 367. 
X Ibid. pp. 179-181. 



22 Public Schools or Denominational Schools? 

which directly combats and destroys the teachings of revelation in the 
hearts of the children. The secular public school must of necessity 
become an irreligious school. 

In no country, however, has the system which separates the school 
from the Church in such a measure become prevalent as in North 
America. There all the public schools are entirely separated from the 
Church. But in no country either have all the evil consequences of 
these schools shown themselves to such an extent as in North America. 
It may suffice to adduce here one testimony on this matter. Professor 
Agassiz, of Harvard University, a friend of the public school system 
and a well-known free-thinker, made for some time past " the social 
evil, its cause and propagation" the subject of special inquiries; the 
result of his studies filled him with horror, and considerably shook his 
faith in the much-prized civilization of the nineteeth century. Thus he 
alleges as a sure fact that in the city of Boston very many women who 
habitually lead an exceedingly immoral life openly avowed tha- the 
original cause of their fall and disgrace had its source in the influence 
which the public schools had exercised over them. 

In what this influence consists, a daily paper of the city of Boston 
explains in words that are not fit to be repeated here. Suffice it to 
mention that in the schools such filthy and shameless pictures are handed 
round among the female pupils that it would be a miracle if the children 
were not totally corrupted. This is a fearful thought for the parents and 
the country. There occurred cases of systematic general immorality, 
and they were kept secret lest the public schools be exposed. And thus, 
rather than have these bad schools fall into discredit, the children are 
allowed to go to moral destruction.* 

Agassiz's crushing verdict is fully confirmed by an eminent physician 
who published an anonymous work with the title " Satan in Society." 
He discloses without mercy the vices and crimes particularly prevalent 
in the higher Puritan world, and asserts that these modern pagans have 
sunk much lower than even the ancient Romans. The author finds the 
root of all these vices in the free public schools and boarding-schools, in 
the description of which he inexorably tears the hypocritical mask from 
the American public school system, f 

No less severe is the weighty judgment of the American bishops of 
the Council of Baltimore, 18GG. It runs as follows: " The experience of 



* Baltirnorer katb. Volkszeitung, Dec. 2, 1871. 

f Ibid., Dec. 23. [From tbe third edition of " Satan in Society" (1890) we learn 
tbat tbe author of this remarkable work is tbe late Nicholas Francis Cooke, M.D., 
LL.D., who joined tbe Catholic Church in 1866. The first edition of his work ap- 
peared in 1869. — Note of Translator.] 



Ptiblic Schools or Denominational Schools ? 23 

long years has more than sufficiently shown what serious evils and great 
dangers are entailed upon Catholic youth by their frequenting the public 
schools in this country. Such is the nature of the system of teaching 
therein employed that it is not possible to prevent young Catholics from 
incurring, through its influence, great danger to their faith and morals; 
nor can we ascribe to any other cause that destructive spirit of indiffer- 
entism which has made, and is now making, such rapid strides in this 
country, and that corruption of morals which we have to deplore in those 
of tender years. Familiar intercourse with those of false religions, or of 
no religion ; the daily use of authors who assail with calumny and sarcasm 
our holy religion, its practices, and even its saints — these gradually im- 
pair in the minds of Catholic children the vigor and influence of the true 
religion. Besides, the morals and examples of their fellow-scholars are 
generally so corrupt, and so great their license in word and deed, that 
through continual contact with them the modesty and piety of our 
children, even of those who have been best trained at home, disappear 
like wax before the fire." * 



V. WHAT MUST WE, THEREFORE, JUDGE OF THE SUPPRESSION OF THE 

DENOMINATIONAL SCHOOL AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE 

SECULAR PUBLIC SCHOOL ? 

This question can now be answered with perfect clearness. 

1. The separation of the school from the Church is a great injustice 
against God. 

The child belongs, above all, to God, not to the world exclusively or 
to the state or to a party, not even to the parents exclusively. When 
God blessed the common mother of the human family with her first 
child, she acknowledged in the name of all parents that it was a gift from 
God. The child belongs to the parents only in so far as God entrusted 
it to them to be reared and educated. God has created it, He is its 
supreme and ultimate end; the possession of God is its everlasting haji- 
piness. Again, when man was lost for God through sin, Christ redeemed 
him with His blood. God has, therefore, the supreme right to the child, 
consequently also the right of demanding that it be educated according 
to His will, and that the school be arranged according to the destiny He 
has given the child. To separate the school from God is, therefore, 
manifestly a great wrong against God ; but this is done, if the school is 
separated from the Church. 

*Concilii Plenarii Baltknorensis II. Decreta. IBaltim. 1868. Tit. IX, cap. 1, 
n. 426. 



24 Public Schools or Denominational Schools ? 

2. The separation of the school from the Church is a great injustice 
against the Church. 

Through baptism the child belongs also to the Church which Christ 
has founded to lead men to God, and in which He has deposited for this 
purpose all graces and resources. Hence the Church is, according to the 
apostle St. Paul, the mother of the faithful, consequently also that of the 
children ; in her they receive supernatural life, in her this life is nursed 
and fostered. To banish our religion from the school means, therefore, 
to make the task imposed upon the Church by her divine Founder 
impossible to her; it means to tear her children from her own motherly 
heart ; it means, in the proper and true sense, to destroy religion. After 
the Church has christianized the nations through the blood of her 
martyrs, after she has transformed the world through the power of the 
gospel, all shall be destroyed through the separation of the school from 
the Church. This is a detestable scheme and a great injustice against the 
Church of Christ. 

3. It is a great injustice against Christian parents. 

To the parents, in the first place, the children have been given by 
God. They have, after God, the first right to the children. There is no 
right more natural and more sacred than this. But God did not give it 
to them to dispose of their children at pleasure; He connected with it the 
most sacred and most stringent duties. The first and noblest one among 
them is to rear their children for their supreme destiny, for the Father 
in heaven, Whose name the head of every family here below has the 
privilege to bear. This duty lies in nature itself. But it is increased by 
the fact that the children have through baptism been made truly children 
of God and heirs to heaven. The school does not change anything in 
this sacred relation. Being, in the first place, supplementary to the 
family, it should not hinder the parents in the fulfilment of their duty, 
but should, on the contrary, be a powerful help thereunto. All the 
religious sentiments, knowledge and love of God, which the parents have 
implanted in the hearts of their children, must be carefully nourished and 
fostered by the school. 

But from this it appears clearly what a great wrong, nay, what a 
great cruelty it is to separate the school from the Church. This wrong 
and this cruelty are the greater, if parents are forced by compulsory 
school laws to send their children to these schools. To compel parents 
to entrust the children they have received from God to schools which 
prevent them from fulfilling their most sacred duties towards them is 
the greatest abuse of power, and the hardest slavery to which man can 
be subjected. A mere sense of justice would demand that where school 
attendance is compulsory the schools be arranged in such a maimer that 



Public Schools or Denominational Schools f 25 

Christian parents can entrust their children to them without violating 
their consciences and their duties towards God. 

4. The separation of the school from the Church is a great injustice 
against the children. 

How great this injustice is can scarcely be expressed in words. If we 
estimate it according to the damage which is clone to the child, and the 
advantages of which it is deprived, it cannot suffer a greater harm nor 
lose greater advantages than by being compelled to spend its youth in a 
school that is separated from God and religion. Both its temporal and its 
eternal welfare are thereby endangered. This is self-evident when ever- 
lasting happiness is considered. But the temporal welfare is most closely 
connected with the eternal. The more a man cares for his eternal 
welfare, the more he cares, also, for the temporal. All that religion 
teaches and commands the child serves to make it already here on earth 
as happy as possible. God engraved on all temporal things the law that 
even earthly enjoyment is true enjoyment only as far as man has the 
moral power to avoid all excess in the use of creatures. Self-denial 
alone, as taught by Christianity, makes earthly joy pure and true. But 
man finds only in religion sufficient strength for this self-denial which 
must accompany us throughout our life. Eeligion, moreover, helps him 
to carry the numerous crosses connected with every man's earthly career. 
Religion, finally, preserves him from many sufferings and trials which 
the Almighty has attached as a natural punishment to the gratification 
of every sin and every passion. Of all these divine remedies which are 
at man's disposal from his childhood to make him happy for time and 
eternity, the child is deprived in the school which is separated from the 
Church. Hereby the public school becomes in all reality an institution 
for the temporal and eternal ruin of our youth. 

5'. The separation of the school from the Church is a great injustice 
against the teacher. 

As religion bestows through the sacraments a sacred character and 
.dignity on man that far exceeds all earthly things, so it gives a similar 
dignity to all conditions and affairs connected with it. This is also true 
with regard to the teacher's calling. The Christian teacher in a 
denominational school, who is at the same time teacher of religion and 
representative of God, occupies a very different position from that of a 
teacher in a school which is separated from religion. What a Catholic 
teacher is in a Catholic school is very beautifully expressed by the pious 
Overberg in the following words containing the gist of a longer treatise : 
" I am a teacher; — this means, therefore, I have an office which is one of 
the most venerable and important offices on earth. For, what office 
could be more important and more venerable than that of being a teacher 
of truth and virtue for so many ignorant, a representative of so many 



26 Public Schools or Denominational Schools? 

parents, a spiritual father of so many children, a fosterer of the nursery 
of the community, a visible guardian angel of the children of God, a 
custodian of the price of the Mood (if Jesus, a guard of the temple of the 
Holy Ghost, a companion and guide of so many young pilgrims to God, 
their Father? As teacher I must he all this!"* 

The same author exhorts the teacher often to make the following 
reflections: 

" Often consider your pupils, when they are sitting or standing around 
you, with the eyes of faith, and ask yourself: Are these not children of 
God, favorites of God, heirs of God ? Are they not the innocent minor 
brothers of my Saviour, the price of His blood, the temples of His holy 
Spirit ? Are they not the charges of the angels, the joy of their parents, 
the flower of humanity, the hope of a better posterity? 

" Sometimes reflect : If these little ones who have been entrusted to 
me knew how much they could profit by my piety, what would they do ? 
Would not many, perhaps, fall on their knees before me, stretch out 
their little hands towards me, and address me with tears in their eyes : 
dear teacher, please do your best to be good and pious, that you may 
the better teach us to be so too! Live so as to go surely to heaven, in 
order that you may help us the better to go there too ! 

"Another time you may consider: If my Saviour would appear to me 
in order to recommend to me these little ones whom He loves so much, 
could and would He not tell me : Behold the marks of My wounds in My 
hands and feet and side. The souls which I have confided to your care 
have been bought by the blood that streamed from these wounds. 
Sanctify thyself for them as I have sanctified Myself for all of you.f I 
shall require their souls also at thy hands.J 

" It is very useful to ask one's self frequently: What will these pupils 
of mine think of me on their death-bed and before the judgment-seat of 
God ? Will they have cause to pronounce upon me a blessing or a 
curse ? What shall I myself on my death-bed think of my conduct dur- 
ing my teaching generally and, in particular, during the religious in- 
struction ? Will the thought of it cause me anguish or consolation ?"§ 

So sublime is the teacher's calling in the light of faith. In this 
manner the Christian teacher regards himself and his vocation. In this 
manner he is looked upon and respected by the priest who works with 



* "Anweisung zum zweokmaessigen Schulunterricht " [Directions for a Proper 
Instruction in School], by Overberg, page 81. 

\ John xvii. 19. 

X Ezechiel xxxiv. 10. 

§ " Christkatholisches Religionshandbuch " [Hand-book of the Catholic Religion], 
by Overberg, p. 6. 



Public Schools or Denominational Schools f 27 

him in the school, by the parents of his pupils, and by the children 
themselves. What consolation, what strength, what holy joy do not 
these Christian ideas afford the teacher in his difficult calling ! The 
school, however, which is separated from the Church divests him of this 
higher dignity, of this sacred character, of these consoling and elevating 
sentiments. The teacher who is no longer a teacher of religion, who 
does no longer regard himself and the children in the light of faith, and 
is no longer considered by them in this light, suffers, therefore, an un- 
speakably great loss. He loses the higher mission he has received from 
God; he loses that higher authority in virtue of which he took towards 
the child the place of God, the place of the Christian father, the place 
of the Christian mother; he loses, at the same time, all the graces which 
through the Church flow to him as a co-laborer in the vineyard of the 
Lord. Thus he sinks down to the level of a mere instructor, of an ordi- 
nary business-man, of one who does a very troublesome and often un- 
grateful business, solely for the sake of an earthly compensation and for 
a temporal end. 

G. The separation of the school from the Church is, finally, the 
greatest injustice against civil society itself. 

Society is again made unchristian by the secular public school, As 
Christianity is also the nursery of true civil virtues, these civil virtues 
are diminished wherever the influence of Christianity is diminished. 
The fruits of dechristianizing the higher, middle, and lower schools 
make their appearance everywhere in proportion as the dechristianizing 
of the schools is proceeding. 

VI. WHO DEMANDS, AFTER ALL, THE SEPARATION OF THE SCHOOL 
FROM THE CHURCH ? WHO ALONE CAN DEMAND IT ? 

1. The Catholic people do not demand it. If they had to give 
their votes, only few would rise in favor of the public schools. Univer- 
sal experience proves that wherever Catholic parents have the free choice 
of schools, they always prefer those schools which are intimately con- 
nected with religion. Their love for their children shows them what is 
truly useful or injurious to them. They are, therefore, less influenced by 
the agitations of parties and the opinions of the day in the things that 
directly affect the welfare of their offspring. From the daily experience 
of their own family life they have come to know the blessings of religion 
and its influence on the child, as well as the corruption that takes hold 
of it when it is estranged from religion. Hence it is that parents con- 
sider themselves happy if they can confide their child to a school that is 
intimately connected with the Church. Even in small Catholic congre- 
gations of the Palatinate, for example, many parents cheerfully make 



28 Public Schools or Denominational Schools f 

the greatest sacrifices to secure this blessing for their children. The 
Catholic people, therefore, do not want the separation of the school from 
the Church. 

2. That the Church herself does not demand, but rather detests and 
rejects, the secular public school as the greatest curse, needs no proof. 
Wherever the Church has raised her voice, wherever popes, bishops, and 
priests have pointed out the duties of parents, they have admonished 
them to send their children only to such schools in which instruction and 
education rest on the eternal foundations of revelation. 

3. Believing Protestants and believing Jews reject, in the same man- 
ner, secular public schools. This follows necessarily from the belief in 
divine revelation. Where the living faith exists that God Himself has 
manifested to men the fundamental principles of truth and of a truly 
human life, the imperative conclusion naturally follows that at the age 
when the young receive their training, when they are to be shown the 
right path for their after-lives, they must by no means be excluded from 
these divine teachings and precepts. 

4. The government itself held, until of late, that the secular schools 
are pernicious : a conviction which was shared by a large number of the 
most eminent schoolmen of all denominations. If the government has 
shown itself, of late, more favorably inclined to secular schools, we may 
well maintain that this is not owing to a conviction that these schools 
are really good and advantageous, but rather from a lamentable obsequi- 
ousness to the intrigues of influential parties. 

5. There are only two classes of people who do, and who can, demand 
secular public schools. 

It is, first, those impious men who have lost the light of divine reve- 
lation. All believing Christians insist on having their schools united 
with the Church, because they believe in the divinity of the Christian 
religion. He who believes in this must necessarily demand that Christ 
with His doctrine and His graces shall also reign in the schools. To 
refuse this demand is, properly speaking, the same as to deny us the 
right of believing in the divinity of Jesus Christ and in the divinity of 
His Church. On the other hand, he who has lost the belief in Christ 
cannot, of course, admit the value of the union between school and 
Church. The demand, therefore, of separating the school from the 
Church springs from infidelity, from apostasy from Christ. This is the 
proper and true reason of that policy. Those pitiable men in our midst 
who have lost the light of Christian faith, and have fallen back into the 
darkness of paganism, evidently cannot appreciate the value of that light 
fur the school and the child. They want the school separated from the 
Church, in order to rob even the children of that light which they them- 



Public Schools or Denominational Schools ? 29 

selves no longer know, and to draw them back again into the darkness 
of paganism. 

The second class of those who demand secular public schools is made 
up of people without self-dependence and without judgment of their 
own. They have not, it is true, lost their faith completely. Neverthe- 
less, owing to vanity, lack of principles, or disgraceful egotism (because 
they fear loss of position, of patronage or gain), they do not decide ques- 
tions of public life according to their faith or conviction. They are 
rather guided in their decisions by empty phrases about enlightenment 
and progress, or by shallow pretexts that reading and figuring are noth- 
ing denominational, or, finally, by the direct order of those on whom 
they depend. Unfortunately, there are in every community such depend- 
ent people. Their master is not God and Christ, but the favor of the 
world, the patronage they enjoy, their self-interest which they always 
have in view. They live on the waste thrown to them by the world, 
and for the betrayal of their faith and conscience they find a compensa- 
tion in this, that in certain circles of which they are but the blind instru- 
ments they are commended as educated, enlightened, and progressive 
men. These conceited, dependent, and selfish people are the disgrace 
and the ruin of our communities, and the hired emissaries of infidelity. 

VII. DUTY OF CHRISTIAN PARENTS CONCERNING THE SCHOOL 

QUESTION. 

We have seen, beloved parents, what the school is when connected 
with the Church, and what it is when separated from the Church; we 
have seen what our forefathers thought, and what we have to think, of 
secular school education; we have seen how manifold the injustice is 
which is contained in the secular public school system; finally, we have 
seen that only those can ask for secular public schools who have aban- 
doned the belief in Christ. 

From this follows, dearly beloved parents, the duty to reject with 
united efforts every attempt of introducing among us the secular public 
schools. To act thus you have the most sacred right, because the chil- 
dren belong to you, because you furnish the resources by which the 
schools are supported, because even the state has till now sanctioned this 
right by its laws. But to act thus you are also bound in conscience, be- 
cause on it the temporal and eternal welfare of your children depends, 
because God will on the day of judgment demand the souls of your chil- 
dren from you. 

If some one were to devastate your fields, or to poison the bread you 
eat and give your children to eat, would you not oppose him with all 
possible means ? But far more pernicious is the attempt of separating 



30 Public Schools or Denominational Schools ? 

from the divine sources of all truth and virtue your schools where spir- 
itual nourishment is daily offered to your children. Parents who look 
with indifference upon a matter of so great importance either have no 
conscience or are apostates from their faith. 

The united opposition of all parents to the threatening measure is the 
more necessary, the more violent efforts the party of unbelievers make to 
take hold of the schools in order to use them in their combat against 
Christianity. That they cannot recognize the true worth of the denom- 
inational schools is, as we have seen, a necessary consequence of their 
unbelief. If they, therefore, for themselves and for their children prefer 
schools which are separated from religion, we cannot be surprised, though 
we lament their baneful error for their own sake. But they are not con- 
tent with this. They want, at the same time, to make their unbelief and 
its consequences a law for the entire Christian people. Herein lies the 
unheard-of injustice which this party strives to commit against the na- 
tion. Because they deny Christ, the schools of the Christian people too 
shall be arranged in such a manner as if the whole nation had aposta- 
tized from Christianity. In their scheme there is no question of progress 
and enlightenment, as they pretend, but only of realizing their hostile 
intentions against religion. 

In order, moreover, to make their success surer, they recur, besides, 
to that other pagan principle that the children belong not to the parents 
in the first place, but to the state, and that, accordingly, not the will of 
the parents, but the will of the state, i.e., of the party which endeavors 
at the present moment to rule the state, has to decide on the whole 
formation and education of the children. All these pernicious plans and 
efforts, however, have their proper root in those secret societies, chiefly 
that of freemasonry, which extend their influence everywhere, without 
betraying anything of then* machinations to the people, and which have, 
without your being aware of it, almost in every community their depend- 
ent creatures who ser ,r e them as instruments for the accomjdishment of 
their plans. 

Therefore, beloved parents, take care of your schools, and follow with 
the greatest attention everything that takes place on the field of educa- 
cation. But above all, strain every nerve to keep your schools, as hither- 
to, intimately united with the Church. It is only through this intimate 
union with the Church that the schools will be enabled to promote the 
true temporal and eternal welfare of your clear children. 

That your efforts may be successful, beloved parents, I give you and 
all your dear children the episcopal blessing in the name of the Father, 
and of the .Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. 

Printkd by Bknzigkk Brothers, New York. 



Public Schools 



or 



Denominational Schools? 



PASTORAL LETTER 



ON 



The Separation of the School from the Church' 3 

ISSUED IN 1873 BY 

Right Reverend W. E. von KETTELER, 

BISHOP OF MENTZ. 



from the german 
By a Catholic Priest. 



NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO : 

BKN^IGKR BROTHERS, 

Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 
1892. 



